OpenSea Acquires NFT Aggregator Gem To Better Serve Users

Just a few months after acquiring DeFi wallet startup Dharma Labs, the world’s largest NFT marketplace OpenSea has acquired NFT aggregator Gem. According to OpenSea, its acquisition of Gem will help it serve more experienced or “pro” users better. OpenSea says its acquisition of Gem will allow it to “learn from Gem’s expertise and intuition about the advanced NFT community.”

Gem’s product enables users to buy NFTs across marketplaces in one single transaction as well as allows payment with an ERC-20 token rather than allowing users to spend their Ethereum. The platform uses analytics such as Sales volume, floor prices, and rarity rankings for NFT collections. Its backers include Dragonfly Capital Partners, Tioga Capital Partners, and Sfermion. Gem says that as an NFT aggregator, its product saves users up to 40 percent on gas fees compared to using NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea directly. People use Gem mostly for acquiring the lowest-priced NFTs in a given project, a term referred to as “floor-sweeping.”

“At OpenSea, our mission is to bring the power and potential of NFTs to more people around the world. As the NFT community grows, we’ve recognized a need to better serve more experienced, “pro” users, and offer more flexibility and choice to people at every level of experience,” OpenSea said in a blog post.

OpenSea’s acquisition of Gem comes days after the company removed Josh Thompson from its team over allegations of sexual harassment, rape, and the grooming of minors. He is a core developer and primary shareholder at Gem. It is still not known if he was still a shareholder prior to OpenSea’s acquisition of Gem by OpenSea.

OpenSea spoke about the Josh Thompson saga in its blogpost. “During the course of our diligence, we learned about and immediately surfaced, some deeply concerning allegations against a now-former member of Gem’s leadership team who operated under the pseudonym Neso. Upon investigating the allegations, the employee was immediately exited prior to the close of this deal. This individual has never and will never be affiliated with OpenSea,” the company wrote.

The acquisition of Gem will give it access to OpenSea’s infrastructure and resources that’ll help catalyze its growth. While both companies failed to disclose the terms of the agreement, Gem did say that the acquisition offer it received from OpenSea was unexpected.

OpenSea says Gem will continue to operate as an independent product and brand. The company, however, plans to integrate some of Gem’s best features onto its platform.